


nothing good ever comes easy, but i never wanted easy anyway

by wartransmission



Category: Fullmetal Alchemist: Brotherhood & Manga
Genre: Established Relationship, Hurt/Comfort, M/M, One Shot
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-03-13
Updated: 2015-03-13
Packaged: 2018-03-17 15:00:02
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,190
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3533771
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/wartransmission/pseuds/wartransmission
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Once upon a time, a couple of years in the past when he’d only been a subordinate and Roy merely his commanding officer, he’d have given almost anything to be able to see the man break his mask.</p>
            </blockquote>





	nothing good ever comes easy, but i never wanted easy anyway

Once upon a time, a couple of years in the past when he’d only been a subordinate ( _too young, too inexperienced_ ) and Roy merely his commanding officer, he’d have given almost anything to be able to see the man break his mask. Just one time, one time was all he’d have asked, just to be able to see Roy’s smug-ass expression fall to pieces. It would have been the best thing to happen to him at age sixteen, seeing the person who he’d always deemed unshakeable acting _human_  for once, instead of acting so high and mighty as though he had Ed in the palm of his hand- which he was, but he didn’t know or understand it then, else he’d have had  _another_ thing to complain about.

Now, kneeling in front of Roy as he tries to soothe him, he wishes he could take it all back. If _this_ \- Roy unable to look at him, Roy unable to even  _touch_  him- was the result of all his wishing, then…then he’d never fucking wish for anything again. _Never again_.

“Roy,” he whispers, tries not to let his voice quaver when he presses his forehead against the crown of Roy’s bowed head. He thinks, desperate,  _Tell me what to do. Tell me what to say. I don’t know how to help you, goddamnit. What do I do?!_

“I’ll be fine,” Roy says, voice muffled by the hands covering his face, “I’ll be fine, Edward. You don’t have to stay.”

A snarl-like sound escapes him before he can help it.  _“You don’t have to stay”? Bullshit! What kind of asshole did Roy think he was to believe that he’d be capable of abandoning him for this?_ He snaps, “Of course I don’t fucking have to. I fucking  _want_ to, Mustang. D’you really think I can leave you when you’re like this? You’re not  _fine_.”

“I will be.” The words are firm and commanding, spoken in the voice he only uses in the office- and Ed wouldn’t listen on any other day because he adores knowing that he has the power to piss Roy off, but he does  _now_ , because Roy is clearly lying through his teeth about what he’s saying. Roy goes on to add, as if anything he’s saying at the moment isn’t complete and utter  _horseshit_ ; “I don’t need you to comfort me, Edward. I’ve lived with this since before I knew you; I think I can handle it well enough on my own.”

“Yeah? It doesn’t look that way to me,  _Roy_ ,” he tries not to growl, hands firm on their hold over Roy’s knees. “You’re not okay. That’s,” he pauses, breathes in, then out, “that’s fine. There’s nothing wrong with that. I’m not the best kind of guy for this, I  _know_  that, but I’m fucking trying, okay?” He swallows, blinks through the blur in his eyesight, “I don’t want to leave you when you’re like this. I don’t know what you need to hear, but I do know that I want to stay.”

“What kind of good would it do?” Roy snaps ( _finally_ , he thinks, tries not to let the relief show on his face) when he pulls away from him, the expression on his face muddled with confusion and anger and  _hurt_  and he just- he just wants to  _hold_  him, because what else could he do to make Roy feel like things weren’t so bad? “What kind of- what would it help if you  _saw_  me like this? I’m not- I’m not any good like this, Ed, I’m not-”

“You don’t have to be,” he pleads, reaching out to Roy’s wrists before he can cover his face again, “you don’t have to be for  _me_ , okay? That’s how we function, isn’t it? We don’t take each other’s shit? So don’t- don’t hold back on me just because you think I can’t deal with it when you haven’t even  _tried_  yet.”

Roy doesn’t bother to pry his wrists out of his grasp- he doesn’t even bother to do anything at all, only letting his hands fall to his thighs as he throws his head back with a wry laugh. “Edward,” he says, patronizing tone adorned with a forced smirk and raised brow when he looks back up at him, “ _Ed_. This isn’t something you can help, do you understand? This isn’t something you can just fix with the right words, no matter how much I wish that that were the case. It just doesn’t work that way. I can’t take back anything of what I’ve done.”

“That’s why you’re the Führer, isn’t it? To change things? To make sure that they don’t happen again? You can’t keep wallowing-”

“You don’t  _understand_ , Edward, that’s the problem!” Roy yells, shoving away the hands holding onto his wrists. “You don’t understand how sick I was, how sick I felt, because I was so _naïve_  and foolish enough to believe that I would be doing the right thing when I joined the military, that I wouldn’t be one of those people helping commit  _mass genocide._  I may be changing things now, but that does not mean that everything I’ve ever done will be forgiven or _forgotten_. You don’t  _understand_ , and that’s… _”_  Roy sighs, the sound coming out weary and so tired that he feels his chest caving in and making a hole where his heart should be, because he _doesn’t_. As much as he wants to understand, he  _can’t_.

Roy says, voice soft enough to be a whisper but loud enough to be heard, “I hope it stays that way.”

(He’d told himself that he wouldn’t cry because Roy didn’t need that on top of this, but it sure as hell fucking feels like he will, just from that.)

“Fuck  _you_ , you bastard,” he snaps, voice breaking mid-curse when he tugs Roy close with hands gripping tight onto his already-rumpled collar. He says, close enough that he can hear the little hitch of Roy’s breath, “Fuck  _you_  for thinking that I shouldn’t have to deal with this. I’m not a kid anymore, remember? I’m already in my fucking twenties, I’m not a  _child_  that needs to be coddled. Do you think I didn’t notice how you let me get away with a lot of shit with just a reprimand instead of actual fuckin’ payment? Did you think I didn’t notice just how much leeway you gave me when I was still working under you? I  _noticed_  those things, Mustang; I wasn’t that stupid to not realize that you were still going easy on me. I’m  _not_  a fucking kid.” He breathes, shaky with anger and frustration, “Not anymore.”

“Edward,” Roy murmurs, looking pained when he settles a hand over his wrists, not quite prying his hands away nor keeping him there. Roy just…touches his wrists, feels the pumping blood under his skin without really meaning anything by it. It’s nice, good, because at least Roy is  _touching_  him.

“Please,” he says, bowing his head and swallowing through his dry throat to hide the pathetic cracking of his voice, “ _please_  let me help. Just let me stay, at least. Let me stay with you through this. You don’t,” he pauses with a shaky inhale, smoothing down the wrinkles in Roy’s collar as he slides his hands down to rest on Roy’s chest, “you don’t deserve to be alone when you’re feeling this way, okay?”

He looks up, and sees Roy looking at him- wide-eyed, blinking in confusion with eyebrows furrowed and lips thinned into a firm line- like he’d just…like he’d just torn apart the one thing he’d known to be right. Like it was ever  _right_  for him to be alone through something like this, like he ever-

“ _Roy,_ ” he says with a thump of his fists over Roy’s chest, only barely reining the anger in at the notion that Roy would  _think_  he deserves this, that anyone at all would deserve to be alone while they’re feeling like shit, “I’m fucking staying no matter what you say, so don’t waste your breath.”

This time, Roy stares at him like he’s an incomprehensible equation, a brand-new array that he doesn’t know what to do with yet, and-

and he’s fine with that, he thinks. That’s infinitely better than being stared at like he’s some _child_  trying too hard to handle something too big for him.

“Why must you be so difficult?” Roy asks in a murmur after a moment of tense silence, bringing one of the hands on his chest ( _his right one, he notices_ ) up to press a kiss against sun-dyed knuckles. He tries to remember how to breathe because the fucking asshole clearly forgot that he can’t deal with affectionate shit like this, though he can probably forgive him for it this once due to reasons that were out of his control.

( _Yeah, that’s the excuse he’s going with_.)

“Did you know me to be anything else?” he says, smirking down at Roy, who offers him a weary laugh in response.

“I suppose not,” Roy murmurs, heaving a sigh when Ed starts pulling him forward into an embrace. “It’s frustrating,” he admits, tired smile more felt than seen when he slumps into the warm arms holding him close, face pressing right into Ed’s shoulder, “but it’s part of why I love you.”

“Same goes for you,” he murmurs back, squeezing his arms around Roy’s shoulders in response to the hands clutching at his clothed back. “You’re fuckin’ frustrating, but I guess that only adds to your charm.” More quietly, he adds in a grumble, “Pisses me off.”

Roy laughs. He says, hints of dry amusement in his tone, “I’d apologize, but I would be lying.”

“ _Ass_.”

“An asset of mine that you dearly like,” Roy hums into his shirt, just breathing him in as he presses close (despite the little shake he does when he laughs at Roy’s stupid attempt at a quip). Ed forgives him the almost-desperate show of affection because Roy clearly needs it, and he can’t quite bring himself to deny Roy the one thing that he can give.

So he keeps Roy close, presses soft and lingering kisses on his hair until he can feel the tension easing from the hard lines of his upper back, and murmurs into his ear, “I want you to be okay. It doesn’t have to be quick, and I don’t want you to force for it my sake. I want you to be okay for  _you_ , because…”

He swallows, clenches his eyes shut through the warmth on his cheeks and says, “Because that’s what love is, isn’t it?”

Roy doesn’t laugh, this time. Instead, he breathes in, slow and deep, before breathing out warmth on his chest. The hands clutching at his back tighten to the point that he can feel hard knuckles digging into his skin, though not hard enough to leave bruises or marks. Roy says, voice half-muffled by his shirt, “It’s not the lexical definition I know of, but I do think it fits better.”

He huffs out a laugh at that, blinking his eyes open just so he can direct his amused smile at the top of Roy’s head. “Knew you’d be snarky with me.”

He feels Roy’s laughter through the slight shake of his shoulders within the circle of his arms. He can’t quite tell just yet if Roy’s laughing because he’s actually amused, or because he’s too tired to respond with anything else, because god knows that Roy isn’t one for simple and easy things. He’d only now realized the reason for it ( _distrust in the military, widespread corruption; what the fuck was new)_ becauseof his observations of the Führer at work within his own home, which had really only happened because he was pissed that Roy was still working when it was their day-off.

He’s snapped out of his thoughts by the gentle rumble of Roy’s voice into his shoulder, something teasing in his tone when he says, “Did you ever know me to be anything else?”

He smiles wryly at the response, shaking his head as an answer right as he presses his face into Roy’s temple, not quite nuzzling as he is just lightly nudging his cheek against Roy’s cool skin. “Guess not,” he says, rubbing a hand over Roy’s back in comfort. He doesn’t say,  _I’m glad you’re making your snarky comebacks again;_  doesn’t at all imply,  _I’m glad you’re arguing with me, because it just means that you’re still you and you’re okay, that you haven’t given up yet, that there’s still enough of a fire in you to keep you going._

But, he figures, Roy must have already figured that out while they were arguing. He’s good at that, reading him and his actions, and he should find it strange and unsettling (Roy wasn’t even  _family_ , after all), but after spending  _years_  with him as something like a friend and more, he’s starting to understand that it’s just how he cares about people.

Nothing would ever be easy or simple with Roy, but he’d never really expected that in the first place.


End file.
